As the Soviet Union collapsed at the turn of the 1990s, Karina Ambartsoumian’s parents fled to the United States, seeking asylum from religious persecution and better lives for themselves and their daughter.

What they got instead, through bureaucratic breakdowns and the vagaries of history, was a two-decade-long limbo that has seen them rendered “stateless” and unable to access such basic services that their native-born neighbors take for granted. Those include a driver's license, a bank account and, critically, for this story, a college education.

“I’m going to be 25 years old in May,” Ambartsoumian, of Philadelphia, said Tuesday, her eyes filling with tears before a crowd in the state Capitol rotunda. “I’ve been stateless for the past 20 years.”

According to Ambartsoumian, as the former Soviet Union disintegrated the government of the newly independent Ukraine did not recognize her travel documents and birth certificate.

“The United States does not have a status for me, even though I have a Social Security number and have lived here in limbo for the last 22 years,” she said.

Jose Cortez, 19, whose parents brought him into the country illegally from their native Mexico, tells much the same story.

“I face the challenge of not being here the next day because of my immigration status,” said Cortez, who now lives in Chester County. “Education past high school was a major concern for me.”

The Pennsylvania DREAM Act bill sponsored by Sen. Lloyd Smucker, R-Lancaster, is a rare dash of common sense in a nationwide debate over immigration reform that’s produced a lot of heat but not much light.

“We all know that higher education is a key to unlocking potential,” Smucker said during a Capitol news conference, adding that he doesn’t want to see the affected students “trapped in the limbo of unrealized expectations” just because they don’t have the right paperwork.

Smucker’s bill was formally introduced on Monday. Under his proposal, eligible students must offer proof of having attended at least two years of high school. And they must meet all state residency requirements for financial aid.

Smucker’s bill has attracted the support of 12 of his fellow senators, including Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware. It’s likely destined for the Senate Education Committee, chaired by Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon. Folmer said this week that he plans to hold a public hearing on the proposal.

State Sen. Anthony Williams, a Philadelphia Democrat who’s among the bill’s bipartisan co-sponsors, said the proposal “represents the finest and highest goals of what our country can and should be.”

About a dozen states, including Maryland, have adopted similar legislation. Last week, Washington’s state House passed its own version of the bill. Republicans broke ranks with their own party, voting with Democrats on a tally of 77-20 to send the bill the Washington state Senate, the Associated Press reported.

If Smucker’s bill does make it out of the Senate, it faces rough sledding in the Republican-controlled state House, where a spokesman said the caucus

“fully supports legal immigration.” House Republicans also have serious questions about the proposal’s price tag, the spokesman, Steve Miskin, said.

Janet Kelley, a spokeswoman for Gov. Tom Corbett, said the Republican administration has “consistently prioritized protecting state tax dollars by ensuring that they are reserved to those who are legally authorized to be within the Commonwealth.’’

But that puts Corbett and the state House GOP at odds with national Republicans who have embraced immigration reform as a way to lure Latino voters away from Democrats.

“There’s a sea change going on in the ranks of Republicans on this issue,” Franklin & Marshall College pollster and political analyst G. Terry Madonna said. “You can have security first. But you might as well put 11 million people on a path to citizenship. It just makes sense.”

And with Hispanics – particularly in Reading and Allentown – comprising a growing segment of Pennsylvania’s population, Smucker’s proposal “shows the realism that is part of adapting your politics to changing demographics,” said Chris Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown.

Natasha Kelemen, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition, an advocacy group, said the legislation is a way to offer advancement to young people who were brought into the country by their parents as infants or children and had their undocumented status thrust upon them.

“There are [hundreds] of graduates of Pennsylvania high schools who are without the same opportunities as their classmates,” she said.

And beyond the rhetoric, there are actual results: According to research published in the winter 2010 edition of The Review of Higher Education, foreign-born noncitizen Latinos in states with such a policy “were 1.54 times more likely have to enrolled in college after the policy’s implementation” than in states without it.

Lancaster School Superintendent Pedro Rivera likes those odds.

“As an educator, I see this not as a gamble, but as an investment,” he said.